I don't own lotr, and please enjoy.

We proceeded to make our way out of Bree, with Strider and a newly acquired pony. Fali was in renewed spirits after a night of sleep on the boot bench, some hot breakfast inside her from the inn, and direction from our newest addition. Strider was quite serious, given the circumstances, but he was not without heart. I was still relieved beyond measure when Frodo awoke me to take a turn at watch, and I realised I had not been stabbed to death in my sleep by him.

The hobbits were also wary of him, trying to trust him and still deciding if that was a good idea. They reminded me of young ponies, who had been born in the night and found the dwarves coming into the stables the next morning and jumped about, sniffing at the outstretched hand before them, trying not to be stroked. Or an old cat who cared not for strangers, but tried to warm up to them.

Fali, of course, was very much like a hound at a hunter's heels about him. She followed right behind him, leaving me in to usher around the hobbits, and asking him a multitude of questions. Luckily, he was patient enough to answer them. I could hear their conversation from.

"Have you traveled far?"

"Yes."

"How far?"

"Nearly across all of Middle Earth."

"Alone?"

"Sometimes. Ranger's may travel to together, if a distance is too great to travel alone."

"Do you find you ever get lonely?"

"Occasionally."

"Is there anyone you miss in particular?"

"Yes."

There was a pause. "Have you ever come across three giant stone trolls before?"

"What?"

I smirked. Ah the story of the trolls…a popular tale told to us in our youth.

"Where are you taking us?" Frodo asked Strider. I realised then that I had simply followed Strider, along with everyone else, out of Bree with no clue as to where he was taking us. Perhaps I had been too willing to take guidance and leadership after Gandalf had not come to the inn, and with the Wraiths were closing in on us. It was my instinct to follow.

"Into the wild." Strider replied.

"The wild it is then." Fali smiled, putting on more visible optimism, more for the sake of the hobbits than herself. They were beginning to frown a little at the thought of rather unpleasant travels through the wild, what with exposure to the elements, and hours of walking, and rations. "At least we have a plan now."

"How do we know this Strider is a friend of Gandalf?" Merry whispered behind me.

True, many in Middle Earth knew of the wizard…it could easily be a lie from him, though he seemed the honest sort of man thus far…of course that could be him acting a lie as well…then again, I was perhaps overthinking things, and simply too wary of strangers for my own good…

"I think a servant of the Enemy would look fairer and feel fouler." Frodo answered, putting me more at ease. If the others trusted him well enough, so would I.

"He's foul enough." Merry whispered back.

"We have no choice but to trust him." Frodo concluded, and I found myself agreeing. After all, did any of us know what to do now without Gandalf to lead us? A leader I didn't quite know was better than no leader at all, at a time like this.

"But where is he leading us?" Sam asked.

"To Rivendell, Master Gamgee, to the House of Elrond." Evidently, Strider had remarkable hearing, for he was able to pick up the hushed conversation between the hobbits.

"Did you hear that? Rivendell! We're going to see the elves!" Sam whispered.

Rivendell…I mused internally. Yes, Rivendell! Mother had told me of that place, having been there herself. Waterfalls and lush gardens, and learned elves. Rivendell would be perfect to go to. Surely there would be people there who knew of what was going on more than we did. Good, willing people who could take over this quest. I could see the end of the journey already. Only a few more days, with my guard up for the Wraiths and sleeping by a fire, and all would well.

Yes, to Rivendell we would go.

/

Traveling with Strider and the hobbits was becoming…tedious?...bothersome?...bleak? No, all those sounded too harsh, but even I was better adjusted to the wild than they were, which was quite noteworthy. The past three days could be summed up thusly:

Upon the first day with Strider we were all in good spirits (more or less) and followed him like newborn pups follow their mother. We were also quiet towards him, apart from Fali, who kept up her questions of his travels and adventures periodically through the day. We were so quiet in fact, that we did not voice our concerns of becoming too tried to walk much farther. Merry was bumping into me so constantly, that eventually he just leaned against my side as though I were an upright bedcushion and seemed to slowly continue on in that fashion. As for the others, and myself, I was nearly sure we had all sleepwalked the last hour of our path, and the twilight landscapes had been but dreams.

The second day was one of hunger. The hobbits had been too worried after the incident with the Wraiths to have their normal appetite but it quickly returned the following day. The hobbits had all stopped when Strider to a moment to survey the land before us, determining the easiest route with unexperienced travelers. As they pulled out food and cookware, he turned around, surprised. "Gentlemen, we do not stop 'till nightfall." He said, firmly, but politely.

"What about breakfast?" Pippin spoke up, sounding more surprised than Strider looked.

"You've already had it." Strider responded, still confused.

Fali gave me a look that read: He must not know many hobbits, obviously.

"We've had one, yes…" Pipping started.

I sighed at the incident, and said "He means the second one."

"What about second breakfast?" Pippin finished. Strider blinked at him, second breakfasts a very foreign concept to his mind. He then turned and walked away, proceeding to lead us once more.

I followed him as the hobbits repacked their food and pans. Fali took up her position beside Strider. "You mustn't think poorly of them for their appetites." She explained. "Hobbits are used to many meals in a day."

"They live in comfort, and they're having trouble adjusting to the strict schedules and rations of food." I added, hoping to defend their behaviour a little.

"They're only doing what they're used to." Fali finished. "Especially Merry and Pippin."

Strider looked down at her, and I marveled how Fali was able to meet his gaze dead on, my I still found myself turning my glance to the ground. "Truth be told…I thought second breakfast was a myth." He said. Fali smirked and had to stifle a laugh.

"It isn't just second breakfast though…they've got elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, supper…and any number of biscuits and butter in between those. Oh, and desert, they are quite good at baking."

"One would think they hardly have time to do anything but eat." I joked to myself.

Strider rummaged through his own belongings, and pulled out a pair of apples. "These were intended for the pony…" He muttered, and then tossed them back to Merry and Pippin.

The third day, today, had been nothing but mosquitos draining us of our blood, and a nearly flat, empty plain stretching out before us. Bleak was beginning to become an appropriate word for the situation. Just over a week ago I had been in the bright and colorful Shire, and now I was food for the insects.

I tried not to be such a pessimist. I kept any complaints I had to myself, and continued to walk on. But the openness of the plain was starting to put my nerves further on edge. Here we could see for miles, which was an advantage, but so could others, and then there would be nowhere to hide from danger. Now would be a dreadful time for the Wraiths to find us.

By evening, the landscape turned rockier, to some relief. Being half-dwarf, rocks were almost comforting at this point. There was one distinctly large rock in the distance, and for a moment, my mind turned almost whimsical. "You don't suppose that's a tiny mountain, now do you?" I joked to Fali, who snickered at me.

"If it is, we should hope to board ourselves up inside it, sort of like a dwarvish hobbit-hole." She replied, with an amused smile.

I snickered back, feeling a bit more light hearted now. As I had said, rocks were almost comforting right now.

The distance we covered revealed that the littlest mountain in Middle-Earth was not a mountain at all, not even a gigantic boulder. It was a fortress, admittedly one in ruins now, but still standing powerfully in the terrain.

"This was the great watchtower of Amon Sul. We shall rest here tonight." Strider decided.

"Great." I smiled. "We almost have a roof over our heads. Well done, Strider." I said.

Strider turned his gaze over his shoulder and on to me, and my gaze flinched to the ground again. Internally, I sighed. I would have to stop adverting his gaze soon. It would not reduce me to a pile of ash. I frowned at myself, and my words. My tone had been honestly pleased, but perhaps he had taken it as sarcasm, and thought I was mocking him.

"That is to say…" I stuttered, feeling the horrid sense of tension build within me. "…what I mean is…well done…I mean, it's not like there's a house abou-"

"You're welcome Master Gideon." Strider interrupted me, thankfully.

"Well done." Fali rolled her eyes, as we ascended to the fortress. "You handled that so well, it was downright chilling."

"Oh shut up." I replied to her.

"You can look him in the eye you know." Fali went on. "He is man…not a Valar."

"I know." I replied, my tone rather empty and my body very tired. I slumped off my pack as Strider pulled our four short swords, giving them to the hobbits. I was already half asleep when Fali handed me some supper, and before I knew it I surrendered to that peaceful void, in which there was no conflict, no Wraiths, no Ring, and no passage of time.

"My tomato's burst."

"Can I have some bacon?"

"Okay. Want some tomatoes Sam?"

"What are you doing?!"

"Tomatoes, sausages, nice crispy bacon."

I blinked, drowsily into the dimness, my eyes closing and nearly falling back to sleep. Did I smell bacon? No, bacon would mean a fire and it was the middle of the night. A fire would be so noticeable. Only fools would lit a fire now.

"We saved some for you, Mister Frodo."

"Put it out, you fools! Put it out!" A frenzied scuffling and stamping sound followed these words.

"Oh, that's nice! Ash on my tomatoes!"

The voices and sounds were pulling me back awake. I blinked now, and saw shadows on the ground, fading and dying. Shadows? Shadows needed light… I struggled to pull myself out of my comfortable sleep.

There was a sharp, pitched cry that cut through the night. Every hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. My body snapped to alertness. Icy adrenaline spilled into my blood, soared through my body and mind and then pooled with a sickly feeling in my stomach.

"Wraiths." I gasped. I turned my head around and saw the dying embers on the ground. "Who lit a fire?!" I snapped. As if I couldn't guess it already. "Trust a Brandymuck and a Took!" I looked all around me, searching for Fali, but she was gone. "Where is Fali?" I asked. The hobbits looked too scared now to answer my question. "Where is she?" I repeated.

"She went off with Strider." Sam managed to spit out.

The sick feeling in my stomach strengthened. Fali and Strider…gone? But that would mean the only one here now who had ever wielded a blade before was…me.

Oh no.

I was no great swordsman. In my youth I had been won but one spar, and that was completely by accident. I was lucky I had never been scraped up, my only injuries the bruises I sustained from falling down into the sand of the training grounds.

I jumped to my feet, grabbing at my belt for my sword, and nearly dropping it. The hobbits were all gathering at the edge of the fortress, upon the overhang. Through the fog of the night, one could see the Wraiths approaching. "Back away from there!" I ordered them, and they did, snapping back and drawing out their own small swords.

"Go!" Frodo urged us all and we hurried to the highest point of the fortress, putting meager more distance between the danger and ourselves.

They came, surrounding us, more shadow than man. I stood among my friends, in my mind trying to get myself to move forward. I knew the most of sparring, I should stand at the front. But I was not brave enough to move. They pulled out their own swords, far longer than ours, and pointed them at us, sharp metal inches in front of us.

"Back you devils!" Sam prepared to defend Frodo. I was too caught in the torment of adrenaline and staring into the face of death to say anything. My tongue was stone.

That is when everything started to collapse around us and the tension snapped, giving way to pure terror. Sam briefly clashed blades with the Wraiths ahead of us, and in seconds was flung to the other end of the watchtower. Merry and Pippin stepped up for a mere second, and were cast aside, flung to the floor.

They turned to me and my heart squeezed painfully in my chest. I did nothing, too shocked, too scared. I felt rough stone slam into me as I too was flung aside, skidding across the floor and my back slamming into the remains of a pillar. My eyes closed as I winced at the pain sharply.

Frodo. I forced my eyes to open. He was cornered against a column, distraught and helpless. He shook from head to toe. And then he pulled out the Ring…

"Frodo don't!" I called out, coughing out part of the words, as I scrambled back to my feet, picking up my dropped sword. A Wraith turned and flew at me, and I survived the attack by flinching, drawing my sword up to protect my body and meeting his blade, crossing it with my own. The Wraith hissed and pushed against the crossed weapons, forcing me to bend awkwardly backward, farther, and farther, as I was pushed to one knee.

My hand was shaking as I panicked there. I heard a great cry of pain that was Frodo's. In that moment, I felt sure he had been killed, and that my own death was before me.

There was suddenly a yell, distinctly Striders. Fali's cry of 'Gideon!' echoed it. I was too occupied with staring into the dark abyss that was the face of a Wraith to look at what was happening, but I could still hear the clash of sword meeting sword, not weak and undecided as Sam's bold attempt had been, but strong and sure.

There was an angry yell from Fali, and I saw a silver flash out of the corner of my eye, the moonlight glinting off the symbols etched into our swords. She stabbed into the creature's ankle without remorse. The Wraith screeched, the sound so incredibly pitched and loud I thought my ears would bleed. It retracted it's blade and without him pushing against me I fell down, my balance lost. Fali stood ready, and moved quickly, her skills taking over, her body shutting out the fears in her mind in a way that mine was unable too. The Wraith turned to her and tried to strike, but her blade always there to meet his.

From the ground I could Strider moving like a true warrior, sword slashing against the Wraiths, inflicting wounds, brandishing a torch, which they swayed away from.

I then noticed Frodo, alive, but bleeding from his shoulder and in pain. Sam was already at his side.

The Wraiths did not look like they could be killed, but they still appeared to feel pain, and once they saw that Strider was not surrendering and their wounds become numerous from his attacks they fled.

"Get down Fali!" He shouted. Fali crashed herself into the floor. Strider threw his torch with so much accuracy that it struck the Wraith in it's shadowy face. It's entire being quickly lit up in flames, in a way an ordinary man's would not. Screeching again, it ran, falling from the edge of the watchtower.

They were gone…for now.

"Strider! Help him, Strider!" Sam yelled, as Frodo breathed heavily and gasped in pain. Fali ran to his side.

"Frodo!" Her hands crossed over the wound in his shoulder. "What happened?" She asked.

Strider picked up a dagger beside Frodo, and grimly replied "He's been stabbed by a Morgul blade." The blade then crumbled and dissolved in his hand, leaving only the hilt, which he cast aside."This is beyond my skill to heal. He needs elvish medicine." Strider picked Frodo up and began to carry him off on his shoulder. The cry of the Wraiths could be heard in the distance. "Hurry!" Strider added.

"We're six days from Rivendell. He'll never make it!"

"We must hurry Sam." Fali said, wringing her hands, and placing her sword back in her belt. "Merry! Pippin! Grab our supplies! Be quick!" She then turned to me, looking me up and down, and sighing in relief when she saw I was thankfully unharmed. "Thank goodness." She breathed. "You're lucky to be alive Gideon."

I felt as though luck was the only reason I was still alive.

Whatever luck we did have before was surely running out, and quickly. Frodo's condition worsened, and traveling seemed to only make things worse. A few days later we had found ourselves back in a forest, the trees offering some cover from the Nazgul. Frodo still breathed in a series of gasps and shudders. His eyes were going bloodshot, making the bright blue of his irises look wretchedly out of place. His skin had gone pale and grey, and the wound in his shoulder festered at an alarming rate.

Fali was at the side of her friend near always. We had to stop for a brief rest, and Sam and her were trying to get him to drink water. The last thing we needed was for Frodo to become dehydrated as well. It was hard enough keeping him fed.

"Look, Mister Frodo. It's Mister Bilbo's trolls." Sam said, trying to be light hearted still.

Fali and I looked up for the first time since we had stopped and beheld that the great rocks had arms and legs and faces. Bilbo's stone trolls…Mother and Father's stone trolls.

"I always wanted to see them." Fali said, softly. "We're probably sitting right where they tried to roast half of Thorin's company on a spit."

"And decide if they wanted to squish them into jelly." Sam smiled a little. "Right Mister Frodo? Mister Frodo?" Sam asked, feeling at his forehead. "He's going cold!" He turned to Strider, hoping for some aid.

"Is he going to die?" Pippin asked nervously.

"He's not going to die!" Fali snapped at him.

"Fali…" I said, my tone implying that it was a possibility, and an increasingly likely one.

"He is not!" Fali shouted back.

"He's passing into the shadow world. He will soon become a Wraith like them." Strider said. The Wraiths cried out in the distance, and Frodo gasped, as if to answer them.

"They're getting closer." I said. "We cannot stay here, we must keep moving."

"We won't be fast enough with Frodo like this." Fali said.

"Sam, do you know Athelas plant?" Strider turned to Sam.

"Athelas?" Sam did not understand.

"Kingsfoil?" Strider clarified.

"Kingsfoil — aye, it's a weed." Sam nodded.

"It may help to slow the poison. Hurry!" Sam rushed off at his word. "Fali, see if you can scout the Wraiths out."

"She's not going out there." I responded.

"She will not have to Master Gideon." Strider nodded to the stone trolls before running off in search of the herb himself.

Fali stood. "I always said I would climb over these things one day." She then proceeded to climb up the stone trolls, clinging to the overgrowth on them. I stood at the base of them, and kept my eye on her, lest she fall when I wasn't looking, and sprain her wrist as she had when she was a child.

Fali knelt upon the hunched over back and shoulders of a troll and scanned the area around us. "Do you see anything?"

"No, the Wraiths do not carry torches with them." She shook her head. "The easiest path to us looks like it's from the south-west though. I doubt it matters much to them, but it's the smartest one to take." She paused. "I think I can see Strider, he brought a torch with him."

"Has he found any Kingsfoil?" Sam asked, returning unsuccessful. "I dare not go looking any farther with the Wraiths out there, and no light."

"He must have, he has stopped." Fali replied.

"Don't worry, Mister Frodo." Sam said.

"He's returning now." Fali said, and then as we heard him approaching, "Who does he have with him?"

I turned to see Strider and a woman return from the thickets. The lady had pointed ears, and was quite beautiful. An elf.

"Who is she?" Merry asked, as Fali quickly descended the stone troll.

Frodo." The elf knelt beside him.

"She's an elf." Sam observed, in awe of such a being.

Strider had found the herb and was quickly applying it to Frodo's wound. Fali was soon beside me, or else she would have rushed to Frodo's side and interrupted the two. "She's the one he misses the most." She said, to herself, but I was close enough to hear.

"He's fading. He's not going to last. We must get him to my father." The elf said as they rose, holding up Frodo. "I've been looking for you for two days."

"Where are you taking him?" Merry asked.

Strider and his friend were too busy attending to Frodo to take note of Merry's question. "There are five wraiths behind you. Where the other four are, I do not know." The elf said, warningly.

Strider propped Frodo up in the saddle of the elf's horse. He then said a phrase in elvish, that left us all wondering what he saying. The elf, of course, replied in the same tongue.

"What are they saying?" Pippin asked.

"I don't care." Fali shook her head. "They're saving Frodo, let them speak elvish if they want to."

The only part of the conversation we did understand was when the elf said "I do not fear them." Fali gazed at her approvingly.

The two of the grasped hands overtop the saddle quite tenderly, quickly said goodbye (though I don't fully know, the words were still elvish), then the elf mounted the horse, with Frodo in front of her, and prepared to leave.

"Please be careful." Fali said.

"I will." The elf nodded down to her.

"Arwen, ride hard. Don't look back." Strider said to his companion.

Arwen nodded and then urged her horse to run, and was gone.

"What are you doing?!" Sam demanded. "Those Wraiths are still out there."

"I know." Strider nodded, gazing off in the direction where Frodo and Arwen had disappeared. "Come." He returned to being serious. "We must hurry to Rivendell."

REDRydingHood- I know, finally, right?

Eowilmathiel- I was hoping someone would pick up on the carrot man! Thank you!

OH IMAGINATIVE AND CREATIVE ONE- Once more, thank you.

The BugSlayer - You found me! Yes! I was starting to become worried. Glad you're enjoying it.